Page 11 of Meet Cute Reboot
“Don’t be long. The beans need snapped.”
I rest my hand on Nana’s shoulder. “I’ll hurry. If you distract Michael, I can run out and be there in five minutes.”
Nana waves a hand in the air. “You and Michael need to work out you and Michael.”
“I did work it out. I thought. I divorced him. Anyway, be careful. I’ll see you in a few.”
The sanctuary is mostly empty by the time I reach him.
“Oh, hey, Cassie,” he says like he just happened to run into me. “Great service today, huh?”
When Michael and I were married, there was no spark between us, so we stopped being intimate. Eventually, we saw Ray, the Christian counselor at the church, told him we were thinking about having kids, but we had this problem...
I expected Ray to tell us to stick it out, pray together, ask for God’s intervention. He did tell us to pray, but he told us to not to sugarcoat things because now was the time to call it off, not when we’d added children to the mix.
After several more months of counseling, a lot of praying, several late-night discussions, we decided to call it quits. We were better being friends. It was an amicable split. He got the Grand Cherokee. I got our cat, Pudge.
We both got the church. Hence my current predicament.
“It was a good service,” I say to Michael. “Pastor Ellis gave me a lot to think about.”
Michael wipes his mouth and then looks down at his feet. “Yeah. That. Thinking of. I mean, speaking of.” He looks up at me and starts rocking on the balls of his feet. “I’ve been doing a lot of that. Thinking, I mean. Hey. Would you like to go to lunch? I’d like to talk to you about something.”
“I’m sorry. I told Nana I’d help her fix dinner.”
“Is there some other time?”
“Oh.” I shift my purse to my right shoulder. “I’m really busy with MatchAI. It’s going great by the way. You should sign up. I’ll give you a coupon for a free month.”
“Okay. Then, let’s do this now.”
“Do what?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“You’ve always been good at that,” I say. “Thinking. It’s one of your specialties.”
“I think we made a mistake.”
“I’m not giving up Pudge. You said I could have her.”
“No, not that. I mean, I think we made a mistake splitting up.”
I feel dread rise to my chest, the same dread I used to feel when Michael took off his boxers and climbed into bed. How horrible to admit, but it’s true.
“Okay.” I clasp my hands and raise them to my chin. “I was afraid you might say that. We did the right thing, Michael. I’m moving on and you need to too.”
“How are you moving on? I mean, with who?”
“Well...” I scratch above my ear. “I just had a date Friday. It went great. I think. We livestreamed it. You can watch. It’s still posted on my Instagram account.”
Michael’s shoulders slump. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. “You livestreamed your date?”
“It was a date slash promotion. Nothing serious.”
“With who?”
“You wouldn’t know him.” I realize my lie won’t hold water if Michael watches the livestream. He knows all about Luke, the good, the bad, and the really ugly. “I lied. You would know him. It was Luke. Luke Curtis.”